Building a sci-fi TV show through an MMO (and vice versa)

You can tell that guy on the ATV is practicing for his close-up on the TV show...

Trion Worlds

Building a massively multiplayer game on top of an existing science fiction universe is nothing new, as anyone who has played The Matrix Online, Star Wars Galaxies, or Battlestar Galactica Online can tell you. But with Defiance, MMO developer Trion Worlds is trying to create a new dynamic where events that happen in the game directly affect the plot and storylines in a concurrently running Syfy network TV show, and vice versa.

Already over four years in the making, the team behind Defiance is finally unveiling details about both the game (which will be available on PC, PS3, and Xbox 360) and the show, in advance of a planned April 2013 launch. Set in the near future, the world of Defiance is built on the premise of a group of alien ships crash-landing on Earth and terraforming the planet in significant and somewhat destructive ways.

At a press event, the show's creators stressed the human scale of what's essentially an immigrant drama, where the citizens of this new world are trying to rebuild and "not just survive, but really live." The game, on the other hand, will mainly focus on shooting at stuff. A short hands-on demo had groups of players driving ATVs around a beautifully desolate landscape and joining together to fight off increasingly tough groups of beetle-like "hellbugs" that fall from the sky.

Those two very different experiences might sound hard to tie together meaningfully, but there are some ways in which taking part in one side of the "transmedia experience" can help add to the other. The creators gave an example of an in-game quest where players work with non-player characters to rescue a gem from a group of aliens. Those characters end up stealing the gem for themselves and driving off from the game's setting of San Francisco. In the opening scene of the first episode of the show, you see those same two characters driving into the show's setting of St. Louis, stolen gems in tow.

The idea is that playing the game isn't absolutely necessary to understand the show, but that it can help make the experience richer. "If you think about it from the perspective of someone who just watched the pilot, two characters that clearly have something stolen, driving at breakneck speed, clearly they're being chased—it sets the beginning of the show really really well," Trion Worlds Head of Development Nick Beliaeff told Ars Technica. "If you played the game, though, you know why."

But the integration can go deeper as well. The show might introduce a new storyline involving a mysterious plague that is afflicting the entire continent, Beliaeff said. Players in the game could then work toward finding a cure. If the cure is found, the particular player that dredged it up could be mentioned on the show, or even become a walk-on character in a future season, events Beliaeff compared to "winning the lottery."

But what happens if players fail to find the cure in time for the next episode? "Watch the show to find out," Beliaeff teases.

While protecting what he called the "secret sauce" of how to control for highly interactive event outcomes while producing a non-interactive, long-lead TV show, Beliaeff said the creators have developed a "well-oiled machine" based on coordinating pivot points within the Defiance universe. "I cannot overemphasize the amount of planning we have to do to make the interconnectivity work," he said, mentioning that 20 to 30 people at Trion are collaborating with their counterparts at Syfy through daily meetings and regular summits.

"We started the project in a more traditional 'games-and-Hollywood' way. They're sending us scripts, asking 'does this work'—and it didn't work," he said. "They're about characters and all that stuff, and for us... we care, but that's not what we start with. What's the art, what's the technology, what's the gameplay style? Once we realized that, we took a step back and educated each other—here's how you make a game, here's how you make a show, this is what we need to do first, this is what they need to do first."

It remains to be seen whether Trion and Syfy can pull off this ambitious integration in a meaningful way. Still, it's nice to see someone trying to thread the cross-media licensing needle with something a little more substantial than characters and setting cribbed from an established film or TV universe.

Promoted Comments

All that needs to happen for this to really take off in my book is for a player faction to form that is determined to alter the preset storyline of the show (inasmuch as it is preset, which apparently isn't much) as much as possible. If the players can succeed in derailing the shows plot and even change the entire shape of the season, and the show manages to not only keep up but make it enticing for the players to keep playing with things, this show will be a success in my eyes.

This idea is incredible and I am excited to see it pan out. However, the screenshot shows rather derivative gameplay. Marines shooting a giant beetle/crab? Will the online gameplay feature more interactive missions or will it simply be a re-hash of "generic FPS" with some cinematics or scripted storyline to tie it to the show's plot?

All that needs to happen for this to really take off in my book is for a player faction to form that is determined to alter the preset storyline of the show (inasmuch as it is preset, which apparently isn't much) as much as possible. If the players can succeed in derailing the shows plot and even change the entire shape of the season, and the show manages to not only keep up but make it enticing for the players to keep playing with things, this show will be a success in my eyes.

I think this could be interesting, there's lots of possibilities, especially if they want to make the game events quite difficult and time sensitive. I think the key to this would be difficulty though. Making major cross-over events such that with all the thousands of players, only a handful will succeed, but all that do not are still fairly rewarded and encouraged to keep playing/trying.

Allowing for multiple win scenario's to drive a story forward could be interesting too, require the players to use some un-hinted at object as the key to completeing what would otherwise be insane efforts to complete, but then they could allow for enough players to brute force success. They could have an event that requires 100's of characters participating to progress, then for the final section, they make it a single player instance in the game to finish the event, and the first person to complete the instance is noted as the lone person to succeed in canon. I think I'd have more fun coming up with stuff than playing them...

I'm extremely wary of getting invested in any new show on SyFy (or Fox for that matter) these days. They have a well earned reputation for killing off shows after one season... and sometimes even sooner.

All that needs to happen for this to really take off in my book is for a player faction to form that is determined to alter the preset storyline of the show (inasmuch as it is preset, which apparently isn't much) as much as possible. If the players can succeed in derailing the shows plot and even change the entire shape of the season, and the show manages to not only keep up but make it enticing for the players to keep playing with things, this show will be a success in my eyes.

my first thought upon reading the article was "awesome, we'll be able to grief a tv show". if the game doesn't totally suck, there's going to be at least one huge faction from a website like somethingawful/reddit doing everything they can to screw up the world.

All that needs to happen for this to really take off in my book is for a player faction to form that is determined to alter the preset storyline of the show (inasmuch as it is preset, which apparently isn't much) as much as possible. If the players can succeed in derailing the shows plot and even change the entire shape of the season, and the show manages to not only keep up but make it enticing for the players to keep playing with things, this show will be a success in my eyes.

my first thought upon reading the article was "awesome, we'll be able to grief a tv show". if the game doesn't totally suck, there's going to be at least one huge faction from a website like somethingawful/reddit doing everything they can to screw up the world.

I'd be willing to bet the only aspects of the game that would make it into the show would be anything quest or special-event related.

This idea is incredible and I am excited to see it pan out. However, the screenshot shows rather derivative gameplay. Marines shooting a giant beetle/crab? Will the online gameplay feature more interactive missions or will it simply be a re-hash of "generic FPS" with some cinematics or scripted storyline to tie it to the show's plot?

Again, I'm excited...but cautiously so.

Trion's other big property is Rift, which is a very well-executed game.. It has a lot of innovative gameplay and caters to nearly every type of themepark MMO player.

My biggest negative for Rift was that the environments, enemies, lore and factions were very generic and unengaging. Something like this SyFy tie-in could really help with that.

This is interesting. Trion is pretty solid, and the TV show team looks like it could work too. Even if the integration never really works out, I think we will see the benefits in the show being meticulously planned ahead of time. Nothing destroys a show with continuity faster than the writers making it up as they go along.

Nothing destroys a show with continuity faster than the writers making it up as they go along.

As lame as this may sound, I think a lesson could be learned about this from professional wrestling. (Don't laugh!) As thin as the plots often are, their writers often do have to make things up as they go along, due to injuries or things happening off camera, yet they've managed to keep up successful regular live shows for years, without even having the benefit of a season break for a breather.

All that needs to happen for this to really take off in my book is for a player faction to form that is determined to alter the preset storyline of the show (inasmuch as it is preset, which apparently isn't much) as much as possible. If the players can succeed in derailing the shows plot and even change the entire shape of the season, and the show manages to not only keep up but make it enticing for the players to keep playing with things, this show will be a success in my eyes.

Pretty much this. Just because the "plot" mentions in game stuff doesn't mean the folks in the game have any influence unless it can be derailed via things like thistledown's shard defense(AC1) of Lord British's early near execution (UO). or +~Amarthiel in the ettenmoors dropping in to work with the creeps against the freeps occasionally as a general (LotRO). If it's a derived "event" where there is a new quest for a few days/weeks & one random player gets a random name drop... so what. If it's an "event" where there is only one possible outcome & the macguffin you stole to save the city is just a trash item with no value or options besides "save the city"... so what? I can remember many "events" in AO where some NPC faction was doing [badthing] where a lot of the high level players offered to help them where the option was simply not possible. MxO's events worked out "ok" because they did the same thing from the PoV of the different factions reacting to each other in different parts of the world on different servers & told the story on the website... but they only worrked "Ok". Old EQ events where "GM Event" usually meant "RUN!" were more memorable than most "events I've seen since. I can remember asking a gmpc troll if he would allow me to pass" & interacting with him to get passage whole he was mercilessly sicking his pets after folks just running through. I can also remember things like a GM snapping one day & teleporting/binding a bunch of high level folks to veeshan's peak where they got stuck in death loops. Without the opportunity for things to go wrong like all this & more it's not something where the players actually have an impact on things.

If the game is fun & the "events" are pointless, why run away from doing something productive just to get your character's name in a hat they might draw from.

This idea is incredible and I am excited to see it pan out. However, the screenshot shows rather derivative gameplay. Marines shooting a giant beetle/crab? Will the online gameplay feature more interactive missions or will it simply be a re-hash of "generic FPS" with some cinematics or scripted storyline to tie it to the show's plot?

Again, I'm excited...but cautiously so.

Trion's other big property is Rift, which is a very well-executed game.. It has a lot of innovative gameplay and caters to nearly every type of themepark MMO player.

My biggest negative for Rift was that the environments, enemies, lore and factions were very generic and unengaging. Something like this SyFy tie-in could really help with that.

Personally I was fine with all that, it was the hamfisted balancing and game play changes that really turned me off. I loved the game in late beta, but it got worse rather than better with every patch. I'm not sure if the diversity of character combinations proved too hard to balance so they decided to squelch it, or if the guy they put in charge of balance (who also ruined Warhammer) just wanted to force people to play his way.

I've been playing around with the free demo lately, but judging from past patches, even though it's been out all this time they are still employing the "brain surgery with a meat hammer" approach, so I'm hesitant to get too invested. That said, there have been a number of quality of life improvements over that time, so I give the people in charge of usability high marks.

Interesting idea but also remember this is the Network that killed off these cool shows that many Science Fiction Fans followed.1.Stargate Universe2.Farscape3.Caprica4.Eureka5.Sanctuary6.The new planned BSG Prequel Series "Blood and Chrome7.Andromeda because we all love "Hercules in Outer Space"

They do love to give us more and more Reality TV Garbage and less and less good Space Science Fiction.And they sure love cheap looking Warehouse 13 which I can't really get into.I do not feel the Love from that Network at all.

If it's a derived "event" where there is a new quest for a few days/weeks & one random player gets a random name drop... so what. If it's an "event" where there is only one possible outcome & the macguffin you stole to save the city is just a trash item with no value or options besides "save the city"... so what?

That's why there's lots of possibility, but the reality is noone uses the potential to do anything memorable. If there are not I would say at LEAST 3 distinct conclusions to tie-in event, it's pretty much worthless. The interesting point of such things are the real possibility of failure, where there is a chance your participation is important. Not, the server must kill 1 billion bugs before this date, where you're lost in the sea of other characters, but something more individualized which would likely use a high difficulty to make it less of a poopsock race.

Interesting idea but also remember this is the Network that killed off these cool shows that many Science Fiction Fans followed.1.Stargate Universe2.Farscape3.Caprica4.Eureka5.Sanctuary6.The new planned BSG Prequel Series "Blood and Chrome7.Andromeda because we all love "Hercules in Outer Space"

They do love to give us more and more Reality TV Garbage and less and less good Space Science Fiction.And they sure love cheap looking Warehouse 13 which I can't really get into.I do not feel the Love from that Network at all.

That's because the SyFy network doesn't want to be pigeon holed as some science fiction network scorned by beer chugging bronies. They have worked hard at destroying all interest in sci-fi television on Sci-Fi so that they can attract a larger audience. Regardless that the audience they had before, would have statistically had higher content of disposable income than the audience they seek now. It doesn't matter that they never figured out how to market shows and derive income streams that were not commercials, the problem was they just needed a different audience, apparently one dumb enough to give them money for no reason at all.*

This sounds like yet another SyFU attempt to avoid having to pay actual writers. When this fails, will we get actual science-fiction content, or more wrestling?

Well, this is science fiction. It probably will fall into the incredibly soft and cozy side, but hard sci-fi would be a tough sell for a television network.

I expect we'll see this for a season, and maybe something new in the fall or winter/spring. We'll definitely be stuck with wrestling until their contract comes up and the WWFE decides that giving them a cheap ratings booster isn't worth it and raises the cost of SyFy keeping it. Then they'll have to come out with a big sci-fi show to keep ratings just above the level of shutting the channel down until they can get wrestling back cheaply.

This idea is incredible and I am excited to see it pan out. However, the screenshot shows rather derivative gameplay. Marines shooting a giant beetle/crab? Will the online gameplay feature more interactive missions or will it simply be a re-hash of "generic FPS" with some cinematics or scripted storyline to tie it to the show's plot?

Again, I'm excited...but cautiously so.

Trion's other big property is Rift, which is a very well-executed game.. It has a lot of innovative gameplay and caters to nearly every type of themepark MMO player.

My biggest negative for Rift was that the environments, enemies, lore and factions were very generic and unengaging. Something like this SyFy tie-in could really help with that.

Personally I was fine with all that, it was the hamfisted balancing and game play changes that really turned me off. I loved the game in late beta, but it got worse rather than better with every patch. I'm not sure if the diversity of character combinations proved too hard to balance so they decided to squelch it, or if the guy they put in charge of balance (who also ruined Warhammer) just wanted to force people to play his way.

I've been playing around with the free demo lately, but judging from past patches, even though it's been out all this time they are still employing the "brain surgery with a meat hammer" approach, so I'm hesitant to get too invested. That said, there have been a number of quality of life improvements over that time, so I give the people in charge of usability high marks.

I played at launch and had pretty much the same impression you do... it was real bad. I quit 2 months in after hitting level cap and finding the balance atrocious. When I came back about 5 months later I found it to be mostly fixed. However I didn't play much PvP when I returned - that may have still been broken. I quit again for the TOR launch and haven't been back since (just sort of waiting on GW2 at this point) but my friends who still play are quite enjoying it.

This idea is incredible and I am excited to see it pan out. However, the screenshot shows rather derivative gameplay. Marines shooting a giant beetle/crab? Will the online gameplay feature more interactive missions or will it simply be a re-hash of "generic FPS" with some cinematics or scripted storyline to tie it to the show's plot?

Again, I'm excited...but cautiously so.

Trion's other big property is Rift, which is a very well-executed game.. It has a lot of innovative gameplay and caters to nearly every type of themepark MMO player.

My biggest negative for Rift was that the environments, enemies, lore and factions were very generic and unengaging. Something like this SyFy tie-in could really help with that.

Personally I was fine with all that, it was the hamfisted balancing and game play changes that really turned me off. I loved the game in late beta, but it got worse rather than better with every patch. I'm not sure if the diversity of character combinations proved too hard to balance so they decided to squelch it, or if the guy they put in charge of balance (who also ruined Warhammer) just wanted to force people to play his way.

I've been playing around with the free demo lately, but judging from past patches, even though it's been out all this time they are still employing the "brain surgery with a meat hammer" approach, so I'm hesitant to get too invested. That said, there have been a number of quality of life improvements over that time, so I give the people in charge of usability high marks.

I played at launch and had pretty much the same impression you do... it was real bad. I quit 2 months in after hitting level cap and finding the balance atrocious. When I came back about 5 months later I found it to be mostly fixed. However I didn't play much PvP when I returned - that may have still been broken. I quit again for the TOR launch and haven't been back since (just sort of waiting on GW2 at this point) but my friends who still play are quite enjoying it.

Kyle Orland / Kyle is the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica, specializing in video game hardware and software. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He is based in Pittsburgh, PA.